Postseason catchups and conversations, and for this one, we go to Emory University catch up with head women's soccer coach Sue pat Burgers she gets ready to hit the road to debuke Iowa in the sweet sixteen of the Division three Tournament. Welcome back and congratulations.
Thank you, thanks for having us back. It's great.
Oh, I mean, we are firm believers in ritual You know, you're on the network. You win heep being on the network. I know that you as a coach. Let me ask you this, what kind of rituals do you have? I'm not going to say superstitions, what kind of rituals.
You know? Honestly, they kind of evolve.
Every season is a little bit different, and this year, I honestly tried so hard to not have any rituals, and for the most part.
I think I've achieved. I've achieved check, so I don't have any.
I mean, I don't like to be rushed.
On game day.
Kat and I will meet and I don't want to be rushed in that meeting. And I try try to get a workout in in the morning so that I'm not you know, helps with the nerves.
But truthfully, I don't really. I've been really.
Trying to stay away from rituals this season.
When it comes to your assistant coaches, let me ask about this. What is it like having each one of them around as a piece of the puzzle to help have things fit by the time you get to a specific game day.
Oh, it's fantastic.
I mean, especially with these big weekends when we're traveling, we're just all everybody.
Is jumping in.
Once we found out we were in the NCAA tournament we were hosting and figured out who we were playing, everyone was like, Okay, I'm gonna do a deep dive on this. I'm gonna see if there's any penalty kicks. I'm gonna look for the free kicks. I'm gonna see it if I can screen grab some older games. And I mean, every single one of them is just jumps in and you know, finds their niche of how they can help us, and even you know, and even all kinds of last minute things like I called you know,
Lindy Cobb. Today, Kat and I were doing a lot of film and all of a sudden we realized we're leaving in the morning.
We should probably get them breakfast.
I'm like calling Cob, going, hey, by the way, can you help me with breakfast tomorrow? But as we head to the airport, so yeah, it's all hands on deck for sure.
She's the one that gets to stop at Panera right there in the Emory village on the way into campus. Is that how this works?
Yeah? Well, I really just left it up to her to get whatever makes sense for her on the way in. You know, just give us a variety, and you know, let's give them an option to eat some breakfast.
When it comes to traveling and traveling to a location that doesn't really have you know, you're going from an international airport. I don't think Dubuque has an international airport. You know, you're not going from point A to point B. How difficult is it. I think that this is probably one of the more underreported ideas when it comes to post seasons, is getting everybody together, getting everything organized, making sure that you don't leave anything behind that you need,
and going to a place like Dubuque, Iowa. How much thought has to go into something like this.
It is a mad scramble. To be honest with you, Monday morning, you're just on the phone with shorts travel and while you're on the phone and they're trying to for us, we had to look at four airports.
We couldn't get.
Into two quad Cities and one other in Iowa. We tried Madison, so he ended up in O'Hare unfortunately, So we've got to land an O'Hare and then drive three three and a half hours to Dubuke. But it was a mad scramble because you've got to update all your athletes with their you know.
Names, and their dates of birth and.
Their middle names and you know. And meanwhile you're on hold with the travel agent and she's just searching. You know, I got nine people on this flight. I've got eleven on this flight. And it's one thing when you're coming home from the NCAA tournament to have to spread out and send a coach with you know, two or three groups. But it's a whole different story when you're going you all have to be there together at the same time.
So how many different groups are having to travel? Did you break it up into two? How is this going to work out?
No, we couldn't break it up into two even to get closer. So the other airports in Iowa were only about an hour away. So we've got our whole team on a flight tomorrow morning out of Atlanta into Chicago. So there's thirty seven of us traveling together. Wow. And then we'll bus will pick us up and then we'll head over and we'll get a training session in tomorrow afternoon, which will be good.
Now that you've had a couple of days to sit back and think about round one and round two, what has stuck with you from the two wins that got you into the sweet sixteen.
Well, you know, one of the things I think I meant mentioned to you about like a methodist is you know that should happen. However, whether it actually is going to come to fruition or not, you don't know, because that's those kind of games that can be scary. So that one exactly how we had hoped. It was going to be three goals first half, three goal second half. You know, really were able to go deep into our roster to play fantastic plu.
We knew they were just going to be very good.
I think it was they were pretty tired when we got to the second half because that game before Maryville, that was a great game. So we knew that we could win, but we also knew they had the number eleven up top, who's very creative, dangerous, kind of relentless, and we had to stop her, which are you know, our team was able to do, our defenders, our goalkeeper.
So when you look back at the numbers from this matchup against the Loots, twenty three shots compared to three, eight of them on target, it was just a staggering number in the imbalance of how things ended up offensively. It was only the one goal that you needed, obviously at the end of the day, but twenty three to three in shots, eight to two on target.
Yeah, and looking back and having watched the game, some of our shots weren't the greatest, you know, even a couple of those that were on frame were a matter of fact, the one that we ended up kind of scoring off of wasn't the strongest shot. She collected it
with her feet. I don't really you know what was know what was happening when she decided to dribble towards the corner of the field, and that's when we were able to topoke it away and what he was crossing it and then you know, Mihayla got a piece of it, just perfectly to Nimmer who just hit it one time, but the actual shot coming in was, you know, kind of a slow roller.
Well and at the same time, though, you know, you mentioned scouting and how important it is, and you have you have a keeper in this instance who is just kind of keeping an eye on the ball and kind of going away from the far post, and it was
almost like for it Landy United fans. It was at a ninety degree angle, but it was almost like what Jamal Tierray did earlier this season for it Landy United, where the keeper's kind of focusing on one thing and you have a player come in from behind it to poke the ball away outside the eighteen so the keeper can't handle it, and then you end up getting the recycled idea for.
That one goal, right right, Yeah.
I mean before before Woody subbed into the game, are one of our assistant coaches, Lauren Burke, had had a side conversation with Kat about you know what if you know she's going to put the ball down and we kind of sneak up behind her, she's going to take a punter goalkicker just even put the ball off the ground and try to sneak in and I think it all kind of stemmed from that side conversation that the
two of them were having. And you know, Cat told Woody before she went in the game and lo and behold the details, right, the details.
What's it like having a Cat on your staff specifically because a lot of folks may sit there and look at your roster and go assistant coach and you see, oh, wow, she's there. What's it like that? You know, that's a shocker to come across the board. What's it been like to have her as a part of that collective?
Oh, it's phenomenal.
I mean just her experience obviously as a player right in the world stage, but also as a commentator. And she is an absolute loves soccer, loves love, love, so she watches everything, i mean, all.
The EPL games. She's a huge Liverpool fan.
So it's really neat because we'll talk about trends or different styles, or what people are doing now, or how they're taking goalkicks even differently, and you know, watching World Cups, whether it's the men or the women or the Olympics, so it's really need to have those conversations.
And she's such a student of the game.
When it comes to output this season. You've got a lot of folks that have put the ball in the back of the net. I mean, you got Nimer who's in double digits. Mikayla camp had nine. Uh, you know, Emily wood All would six, Bazouiti had a handful of, Madison Tang had three. You got a lot with three and a lot with two. What's it like to have all of these different folks contribute to putting the ball in the back of the net for you offensively this year?
Oh? It, it feels so good.
It feels so good that in any given game, someone can step up because I mean we've we've played teams where if you shut down their main goal scorer, you know that, and you get some looks at the goal, there's a great chance you're going to win. And for us, you know there they these have been like clutch goals. Some of these you know, they might be one offs, but they're they're clutch goals. Like Matty Tang with her three, I mean, her three goals have been huge goals for us.
But just you know Nim or Mick Zudi Woodie, those guys they are.
Just born to score goals.
They just they want to so badly all the time, and they have that same expectation for themselves. So but to have as many players contribute, uh, it's so great.
But then you look at you look at things defensively, and you look at the rundown. I'm noticing a lot of zero's with a lot of the w's that are attached. So time to brag on your defense and your keeper a little bit here. What's it been like to have all of these clean sheets this season to get you to this matchup coming up against Laura.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that the tricky thing for our defenders and our goalkeepers is that Cat and I were defenders in college. Obviously Kat in the world stage. So for those poor group of players, we nit picked the heck out of them, were probably the hardest on them for sure. But I have to say that, you know, there's a little bit of a turning point for sofin goal where we kind of looked at her and said, hey,
we need more from you. And our defenders have just gotten progressively, progressively better, better and better.
And I think it's.
The the intensity with which they're defending as well and the knowledge that every you know, especially right now in these big games in the UAA games like literally every moment matters, somebody's going out to get a throw in. You can't relax because, especially like this weekend when we play Lours, they have long throws because you know, like they have probably three players that can hit a long throw. So you can never take a minute off. And I think our defenders have just locked in so hard.
You mentioned Lauris, we'll go ahead and go there. So you mentioned one aspect of study hall. What's the rest of study hall been like? Getting ready for Laura's college up there.
They are very opportunistic, really will take half chances like mad I mean, and they're pretty direct style of soccer. You know, a lot of long balls, a lot of long serves and.
Flicks and kick it forward.
And then around the goal. They're opportunistic. You know, they'll they'll just get a piece of it, they'll get a foot in there, they'll run through it with their body. You know, they're dangerous. On corners, they play differently than we've seen. They play with a deep sweeper, like a twenty yard sweeper. So half of the film I'm watching there's another player there that you can't see. So that's very different and more man marking than you know we
traditionally see. So it's definitely gonna be different, but kind of a whole new challenge, which is exciting in and of itself.
I was going to ask with a challenge like this where you're saying, okay, long throw and long serve sweeper playing you know further back, when you have all of these different variables coming at you. Obviously, it's kind of the things that coaches live for in these situations to have those kinds of mental challenges. But you don't have a whole lot of time to impress that information upon
your club so they can be prepared. That's what's it like having to get all of that information into a very short period of time, noticing that there's a whole bunch of different things you have to account for that are different.
Yeah, it's a little bit stressful to be thinking about, Okay, we've got to hit all of these things. But at the same time, kind of you know, you want to play to your own strengths, right, so you don't want to diminish your team's strengths. You don't want them for one minute to change.
The way they play.
But you also have to realize how you clear a ball really matters. It really matters that you get your hips around the ball and you clear it inside the field, because if you just clear it in your defensive third, that ball's coming right into the box on a long throw. So you know, and the details matter, but you have to stay focus on yourself and what you do well while understanding what you're about to see.
Going into this particular weekend, you had some players, you had a handful of players that got recognized by the conference for the work that they were able to do this season. What's it like to get these players recognized for what they were able to do this season in the UAA eleven clean sheets but with all the different goal scorers and all that kind of stuff, you had a lot of recognition coming out there.
We did we did, which was fantastic, And I think that's always a tough thing is to figure out who to nominate.
That's always so hard.
But with Michelle being Defender of the Year first team fantastic, Nimmer clearly deserved it with as many goals as she's put on board, and Chase Kaufman getting first team is just couldn't is kind of storybook because Chase freshman sophomore, you know, contributed but less minutes than her junior year. She unfortunately tore her so wasn't able to play, and she just came back so ready and has just had
a phenomenal, phenomenal season. And to have that recognition for her and for all of them, but that that just like I said, it's storybook.
So and then of.
Course with Mikayla and Claudia getting honorable mention, you know, they have just been so consistent all season long and so good, and especially with Mikayla being a freshman and being able to come in here and turn.
Heads in the UAA. That's fantastic.
And you have a lot of young players, freshmen and sophomores as a part of this roster that aren't playing like freshmen and sophomores now. They're playing more like those rising the rising freshmen heading to sophomore year, the rising sophomore heading to junior year. They're playing like they've been around for a while, and that experience obviously helps as you go into a postseason where the youngins aren't young on the field.
Anymore anymore, no, no, and they're playing with so much more composure and also understanding what is needed in any given moment of the game, and to be able to even just say something to them on the field, like, hey, right, in this situation, we've really got to keep the ball. And then some bouncing ball comes into them and they bring it down and they pick their head up and they keep the ball in the final third instead of
just you know, serving it into maybe one runner. So they've really progressed throughout the season, and I'm grateful that they have because we really need them.
Emery heading to Dubuque to take on the Do Hawks of Laura's College, and I had to do some research to find out why it's a DO Hawk. It had to do with early days of the college under a different name, and since they were based in Dubuque, it was the Dubuque Hawks, thus the DO Hawks. So I would literally in my research and trying to figure out what's a DO Hawk. It's a hawk from Dubuque. And so that was where I got my lesson when it
came to the visitors safe travels Coach. It's two o'clock on Saturday afternoon in Dubuque against Laura's third round NCAA Division three Tournament. Thanks for everything that you guys have done so far to get all of our coverage on SDH to the third round. Good luck, be safe and we'll catch up with you on the flip side.
Great thanks so much,